


When the Night Has Come

by ossapher



Series: The Macaroniverse -- Lams Modern AU [10]
Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: Alex copes poorly, Blood, M/M, Major Character Injury, Modern AU, Panic Attacks, attempts at hurt/comfort, discussion of suicide, emotionally-abusive parent, unreality, with an enormous side helping of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-08-30 08:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8525851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: “Wow, John, you’re lucky I’m still awake or I’d be pretty pissed you’re calling this early,” Alex says, picking up the phone. It’s 4:30 a.m. He’s at the kitchen table surrounded by scribbled post-its and textbooks, his laptop screen glowing in front of him, the notes for his presentation this morning still fourteen pages long and still much in need of trimming down. “You forget your keys or something?”The voice on the phone isn’t John's. Alex can barely hear her speak over the wail of sirens in the background.John, she informs him, has been shot.[Prequel to "And Called It Macaroni"]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one's going to be darker than typical, by Macaroniverse standards. I apologize both for the wait and for posting a sad story during such sad times... but this story is ultimately going to be hopeful. 
> 
> Title is, of course, from "Stand By Me." Many thanks to herowndeliverance for betaing, SamIAm for the medical advice (all mistakes are, of course, my own), and dozens of others on tumblr for letting me whine and moan about this story to them... and remaining enthusiastic in spite of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex has H.I.V. in this verse. I am not is/r/a/a and did not know her. She has deleted her ao3. I have never represented myself as having any medical conditions I do not have. I have never solicited donations based on my work.

Ideally you'd wanna clamp an arterial bleed like his patient’s with both hands, but one of his arms is shot (literally, haha) so he’s making do. He's got a pretty good angle and he's definitely not gonna try and hand off his patient to Magdalena while they're weaving in and out of traffic like this—that’s a great way to stripe the walls and ceiling with his patient's blood.

Magdalena is demonstrating the proper two-handed technique on his shoulder. It feels like she's mostly controlled the bleeding: he can't feel it splurting down his side anymore. Really he should be lying down, but there’s only one stretcher in the ambulance, and the patient’s occupying it. Still, considering he’s been shot he feels pretty good. Magdalena had worked fast, once she’d gotten to him—once the scene was actually safe. Hadn’t scolded him, _see, this is what happens when you don’t get out when I say to get out._

"You with me, Laurens?" she asks.

"Oh, yeah. Definitely," he says, going for a confident grin. He's always been amazed by people's capacity to power through seemingly horrific injuries. Being on the other side of that is kinda cool. The only negative being: he knows this isn’t going to last forever. Sooner or later, everybody crashes.

"I can feel your pulse getting faster," Magdalena says quietly, her tone neutral. John thinks, _sooner, then_ , and nods. Their patient is currently conscious and quietly sucking oxygen: there’s no need to worry her about the fact that the guy currently in charge of keeping her from bleeding out is showing some early but ominous signs himself. John observes, abstractedly and for the first time, that she’s about Francisca’s age. Six or seven, with dark skin and a dark halo of hair around her face. She looks like Francisca, too, John thinks—except he hasn’t so much as seen a picture of his daughter in what… a year? Two years?

“I feel fine,” John says, just as a wave of dizziness hits him. He closes his eyes and holds on, focusing on keeping his hand firm against her wound. For a moment, the world seems to contract down to just that one point. He gulps a couple deep breaths, and slowly, slowly, everything comes back.

He's broken out in a sweat. "Lena, you jinxed me," he says, going for mock indignation. It comes out scared-sounding, which is weird. John isn't scared. Just a little shocky, apparently.

Still keeping her hands clamped down on his shoulder, Magdalena turns to look at the front of the ambulance. John belatedly realizes they've come to a halt. "How's traffic looking up there?" she calls.

"There's a wreck up ahead," the driver says. "I'm gonna try getting up on the shoulder."

"You do that." She turns back to John. "Looks like we're in for a bit of a delay."

The ambulance tilts, groans. They're moving forward again.

John nods towards his patient. "I’m thinking tourniquet," he says, quickly because he’s getting a little short of breath. He hopes his implication is clear. _If I can’t keep pressure on, this kid’ll bleed out._ That’s why he’d been so against leaving her side in the first place, even when it had become clear that the shooter was still at large. Well, that, and the fact that they’re in and out of this little girl’s neighborhood twice as often as the other ones around the hospital. The unfairness had been suddenly unbearable to John. Of course, mostly they’re not there for gunshot wounds—more often it’s heart attack, asthma, diabetic crisis. Boring stuff. Preventable stuff.

As if a bullet weren’t preventable. Maybe it’s just the semi-hypoxic mysticism coming on, but the bullet in John feels inevitable. Feels like it’s been coming for a long time.

"We'll need two hands for a tourniquet," Magdalena says, and John knows he’s been understood. Her words have plenty of implications of their own. John just has the one hand right now, so she’ll have to apply the tourniquet. Which means taking her hands off John’s wound for a moment.

He’s gonna bleed.

John nods, feeling very calm. "Faster the better." He checks in with the patient. “Hey, you good?”

The patient’s eyes flutter open. “I’m okay,” she says, her voice small and brave. Considering how much she’d bled before they’d even arrived at the scene, she’s doing really well. John feels a stir of triumph and pride. This is his own good work. He’s saving this kid.

“Okay,” John says. “Tourniquet’ll pinch like a—like a lot, but it’s gonna help us. Your job for me is to keep really still, okay?”

She nods.

"I'll come back to you the second she's good,” Magdalena says, her eyes finding John’s, making sure he understands. “Ready?"

“Ready. You?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go."

Magdalena lets go of his shoulder, and there’s a dart of excruciating pain as the injured tissue shifts. Blood starts pumping hot down his side again. He keeps pressure on the kid's wound as Magdalena strips off her bloody gloves and puts on new ones, then retrieves the tourniquet from one of the cabinets bolted to the wall. She steps in next to John, and the kid hisses between her teeth as Magdalena twists the tourniquet tighter and tighter. John feels lightheaded.

The ambulance hits a pothole, and the jolt is enough to send John stumbling backwards. He’s not even moving very fast when he hits the side of the ambulance, but he can’t keep his legs under him. He slides down the wall.

It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts. He should go back to the kid—he should help Magdalena. He tries to stand and rises about six inches before his legs give out. His head bangs against the wall as he falls. Stars.

Okay, he thinks, when his brain starts working again. So he can’t help the kid; he can at least help himself so Magdalena doesn’t have to deal with two patients at once. Reaching across his chest with his good arm, he tries to apply pressure to his opposite shoulder. It’s no good: the angle’s too weird, and there’s not much strength in his hand. Blood keeps pumping. His skin’s damp with cold sweat. Academically he knows he should be troubled by that, but he’s as calm as he always is when shit hits the fan. That calm is one of the reasons he’s great at this job. The calm, and how willing he is to lay it all on the line.

Magdalena’s back. She looks... pissed? That’s… that’s probably right.

“How’d it go?” John gasps as Magdalena gets two hands on his shoulder again, driving spikes of pain straight through him.

“It’s done,” Magdalena says. “I’m gonna get you laid down, okay?”

“Gotcha.” He tries not to whimper as he’s moved. Physically speaking, laying down can only help him, but somehow it flips a switch in his head. He’s not the EMT anymore, here to save people, he’s the patient, here to be saved or not as Magdalena’s skill and his luck dictate. His calm wavers. He realizes, quite suddenly, that he might die—because he’d violated the first rule, _make sure the scene is safe_ , and he’d disobeyed Magdalena’s orders, _get out of there, John_. His story might end right here, not quite sure what his daughter looks like, not talking to his dad or his sister, with poor Alex left to sort through all his crap back in the apartment, the artifacts of a short and mostly misdirected life.

But he’s not sorry. He’s not. He did his job, right? That means he’s a good EMT. He never was afraid of dying, not as long as it meant something—the problem is, he’s never known what _that’s_ meant, if he was a paragon or a warrior or just a suicidal hypocrite trying to put lipstick on a goddamn skull.

Whatever it means, he’s about to face the consequences.  

He shudders, his whole body jerking and twitching against his will. Shit. Maybe this is fear. Maybe he _is_ scared.

Magdalena says, “Hang on for me, John, we’re almost there.”

"Can you call Alex?" he asks. She and Alex have met, yes? Why can’t he remember when?

"He’s your emergency contact, right?” Magdalena says. “He’ll be notified when we get to the hospital.”

Apparently she thinks that’s reassuring. Suddenly John has a vision of Alex getting a 4 a.m. phone call from a stranger informing him John’s been shot. Alex, who’d cheered and cajoled him through his EMT course, who’d helped him drill for his certification exam even when he’d had a million better things to do with his time—Alex, who’d helped him finally get his life back on some sort of track. Whom he, at the very least, owes some kind of explanation.

He hadn’t thought of Alex when he’d decided to stay with his patient.

If he had, though... well. Let’s be realistic. John wouldn’t have done any different.

“He’s gonna be so mad,” he gasps. Whether he’s a paragon or whether he’s a fuck-up, Alex is going to be fucking pissed if he dies. The edges of his vision are going gray. “I don’t get—but he’s gonna be, and I don’t want him to be, I need you to tell him for me—“

“Alex isn’t mad at you,” Magdalena says, her voice smooth. “We’ll call him after we drop the kid off, okay? We’re five minutes away from Children’s. And I want you to talk to him, okay? You need to stay awake for that.”

Gray surges in from the corners of his eyes.

“Hey! Hey! John!” Magdalena flicks him in the face. “Where do you think you’re going, huh?”

“Stop it,” John mumbles. She flicks him again, harder this time, and he flinches away, and one or both of those things brings him a little more awake. "Phone's in my shirt pocket. His number's in there."

"Good. I'll call first chance I get."

"I just really need to say... He’s… he’s gonna be...I need to..." The gray’s still there in the corners of his eyes. Dancing to his pulse.

"What do you need to say?" Magdalena asks. Her eyes are very serious.

"Tell him..." John doesn't know. He doesn’t know how he can say sorry for something like this. He’s still pretty sure he’s _not_ sorry, even now. But maybe if Alex were here John could come up with the right words. Maybe if Alex were here he’d give him a name for what he’s just done, help him untangle this mess of blood-sacrifice and sickness and defiance and pride, because God knows John can’t figure it out. He just needs Alex here. "Tell him he can be as mad as he wants," he says, and the gray rises, and no amount of pain can call him back.

***

“Wow, John, you’re lucky I’m still awake or I’d be pretty pissed you’re calling this early,” Alex says, picking up the phone. It’s 4:30 a.m. He’s at the kitchen table surrounded by scribbled post-its and textbooks, his laptop screen glowing in front of him, the notes for his presentation this morning still fourteen pages long and still much in need of trimming down. “You forget your keys or something?”

The voice on the phone isn’t John's. Alex can barely hear her speak over the wail of sirens in the background.

John, she informs him, has been shot.

A feeling like falling, but somehow Alex finds himself standing up, air rushing in his ears. “He… he what? Is it bad?” His voice seems to be coming from outside his skull.

“You need to come to Mercy right away,” the voice says.

Alex hangs up the phone. Doesn’t ask anything more, doesn’t say goodbye, just hangs up and stuffs the phone in his pocket. Shuts his laptop, tosses it in his backpack. Pulls on a coat. Slings on his backpack, steps into his shoes, grabs his keys from the table. Walks out into the freezing, windy night. Sits quietly in the back of a cab with his arms crossed over his chest, his mind a blank, numb expanse that, without warning, paints vivid-as-life images of John suffering, John dying, John dead.

 _You don’t know anything_ , he tells himself. _It's too early. John could be fine._ But the reasoning part of his brain is still working a mile a minute, and it reminds him that John didn’t call him personally: that fact alone is a terrifying sign. He’s breathing too fast and still can’t get enough air. He needs to know right now what’s happening but he’s terrified of what that might be.

The ER waiting room is a surprisingly quiet place. Alex stalls near the entrance, unsure where to go next, his brain staticky and slow. There’s a gray-haired man standing over the woman at the main desk, and Alex goes to stand in line behind him. As he waits, the man raises his voice, his tone growing heated. He leans forward, resting both hands on the desk, and looms over the woman.

“What you’re failing to understand is that I need to see my son,” he says, jabbing at the desk with his finger. “He was brought here recently and I—”

Alex doesn’t even catch the last half of the sentence, because he recognizes the man’s voice from television. Senator Henry Laurens. John’s dad.

Revelations one after another, like a chain dropping link by link:

     1a. Because John didn't call Alex, Alex can assume that John is unconscious, dead, or otherwise unable to speak for himself.

     1b. Furthermore, if John were able to speak for himself, he would never have asked his dad to come here.

     2. (from 1a, 1b) Therefore, no matter what condition John is in, he can’t have asked Senator Laurens to come.

     3. John’s emergency contact form lists Alex and nobody else.

     4. (from 3) Therefore, the hospital can’t have asked Senator Laurens to come.

     5. (from 2 and 4) Therefore, a third party at the hospital must have notified Henry Laurens that John was here. The third party must have had a reason, likely financial, to do this.

     6. John has told him in the past that his father has repeatedly attempted to invade his privacy.

     7. (induction, from 6; circumstantial, from 5) Senator Laurens has been paying someone at the hospital to spy on his son, and they must have told him what happened, and that’s why he’s here now.

     8. Someone has knowingly released John’s health care information to his abusive father without permission.

     9. Alex is going to make someone pay for 8.

     10. Conveniently, 8 is also against the law.

All of this comes to Alex in an instant. Fury surges through his veins, the static in his head arcing, giving off sparks.

“Get out,” he says.

The senator doesn’t even turn around. He keeps badgering the woman: can he see his son, will she tell him what room he’s in, when will they know his condition? Her answers are: no, they’re about to move him into surgery, it’s very serious—will he please have a seat in the waiting area?

“I said get out!” Alex shouts.

“Sir, please calm down and be patient. We’ll get to you soon,” the receptionist says, in a tone that says _don't test me_.

“This man has no right to any information about John Laurens,” Alex says, stepping forward. He lowers his volume by half a decibel at most, but, miracle of miracles, his tone shifts from _deranged lunatic_ to _esteemed gentleman of the court_. “Don’t say another word to him.”

Senator Laurens doesn’t exactly shove Alex, but he puts his hand on his arm and applies pressure. Alex refuses to move an inch. “I am John Laurens’ father. I have identification if you’d like me to provide it,” he says, his voice dripping with Southern charm.

“You’re not authorized to release information to him,” Alex pushes back. He certainly didn’t sit down and memorize HIPAA word for word, but his brain supplies something that feels an awful lot like a direct quote. “A covered entity may not use or disclose protected health information, except either as the Privacy Rule permits or requires or as the individual who is the subject of the information authorizes in writing. I’m authorized, in writing, to receive information about John, and you have that authorization on file for me. This man doesn’t have that authorization.”

“I’m his next of kin and this is an emergency,” Laurens says. “You’re required to provide me with this information.”

“He’s not his legal guardian,” Alex fires back, loud and authoritative. “John’s twenty-four and legally an adult, which makes the point that this man is his father moot. You’re not required to provide _anything_ to this man. You are _permitted_ to provide information to John’s authorized representative which, as I mentioned previously, is me, not him.” He takes another step forward, and Laurens backs up one step.

The woman narrows her eyes and types on her computer. “Name?” she asks Alex.

“You can’t seriously be considering this,” Laurens blusters. “I don’t even know this man and he thinks he can—”

“Yeah, well, I fucking live with your son, so that one’s on you.” The senator swallows and goes pale with anger. To the woman, Alex says, “Alexander Hamilton.”

“Miss, I’m his _father_ —” Desperation softens Laurens’ voice. Alex almost pities him, until he suddenly remembers that _fucking email_ , the one that sent John into a tailspin of depression that Alex was genuinely worried might kill him. So no, Henry Laurens hasn’t earned the title of John’s father. Actually, he rejected it himself.  

“Yeah?” he snaps, “Well, you should have fucking thought of that before you disowned him.” Alex is so angry, all he can do is shake his head and clench his fists. “You fucking _hurt him_ , you spiteful, miserable old fuck. What was it you said? _I can only console myself with the memory that I once had a son_.”

The senator flinches like he’s been branded. Right. John might be dead. Soon that sentence, _I once had a son_ , might come true. John might be dying—John might be dying and Alex is wasting time; he needs to end this and end it fast.

“You cut John out of your life and he’s only done the same to you. And yeah,” he says, turning to the woman at the desk, “you didn’t know about any of this, probably, and the law gives you the benefit of the doubt, but if you release any more information to this man without John’s express permission, given what I’ve just told you, then this hospital will be in violation of HIPAA and I _will_ sue.”

“ID?” the woman says blandly. Alex fumbles his wallet from his coat pocket and hands it over, not taking his eyes off Laurens the whole time. She returns his wallet, and he stuffs it back in his pocket.

“Mister Laurens—” she says.

“Senator,” Alex corrects, without thinking.

“… Senator Laurens,” the woman says, shooting Alex a baffled look, “what this man says is correct. We can’t—”

“Jack is _my_ son.” Laurens slams his hand down on the desk; both Alex and the receptionist jump. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex sees a man in a security uniform stepping forward.

The receptionist doesn’t say anything. Just sits there and watches as the guard makes his way over. At last, the senator turns to look at the sound of footsteps. When he sees who it is, he sighs, his shoulders slumping. “I cosponsored that fucking bill,” he says dully.

“All the more reason to respect it.” Alex snaps.

“He’s my son.” The old man shakes his head. “He’s _my_ son.”

“Sir,” the guard says, touching his elbow.

Laurens shakes him off. “You don’t have to escort me,” he says. He pulls himself upright, and Alex watches, astonished, as he dons a pleasantly neutral expression and nods to the receptionist. “You have a good morning, now, miss,” he says, and strolls out of the room.

Alex watches the senator’s retreating back, slack-jawed. His heart is pounding, his hands shaking. Everyone there is either staring at him or looking pointedly at the floor.

“Where’s John?” he asks, turning back to the receptionist.

“You can’t see him.”

“No, no,” Alex pleads, “I’m his contact, I showed ID, you have to let me—”

“John’s about to go into surgery,” the receptionist says, calm. “In fact, he might already be there. I wouldn’t let you in if you were God himself.”

“Oh,” Alex says. He feels like someone just hit him across the stomach with a baseball bat; nauseous, and he can’t catch his breath. The wild clarity that came to him a few moments ago is still on him. He notices every flicker of the lights, the distant squeaky wheels of a cart in the hospital proper, and suddenly it’s so much, and John might be dying, every second John might be dying, and it’s so, so much. “So I just…wait?”

“You wait.”

“How long?” He can’t take long. He can’t stay; he can’t leave. His thoughts are running away with him, throwing up a hundred bloody images. He has to get out.

“It’s very difficult to say. Maybe half an hour.”

Alex makes his decision. “I’ll be waiting right outside,” he says, and walks there on unsteady legs.

***

Google is possibly the worst idea Alex has ever had, but he can’t tear himself away from his phone screen. It’s a little after five a.m., the sun hasn’t even come up yet, he’s sitting outside the hospital in the bitter cold because the waiting room walls had been closing in on him, and John’s been shot and Alex has an irresistible compulsion to learn the exact physiological cataclysms that could be, at this very moment, killing him. The leading contender is hypovolemic shock, which Alex knew before started Googling—knew, because John told him about what a bitch it is to manage over dinner a couple months ago, because Alex found it interesting in spite of himself and because John needed to consolidate his new knowledge, loved talking about his job, loved his job _period_ , and of _course_ Alex retained everything John said because that’s just how his brain works, except now he has this picture in his head of John gesticulating with his chopsticks over his takeout going on about the deadly triad of hypothermia and acidosis and coagulopathy, each disaster reinforcing the others, and Alex doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to think about John and his deadly triad, John on a stretcher, oxygen mask over his face, blanket not quite long enough to cover the blood splatter on his boots. Alex scrolls through a website discussing the merits of various platelet to red blood cell ratios in transfusions and wants to scream, because what he really wants to know is _will John live_ and the only way he’ll get an answer to that is by continuing to push through these seconds that are trapping him like hip-deep mud, like quicksand, and he doesn’t even know if he’s ungrateful at how slow they are because _what if John’s dead_ , what if this, right now, is John’s last moment on earth, what if Alex just wasted it thinking about seconds with his phone in his hand?

“You’re here for John?” A tall Hispanic woman in a dark blue uniform—the same as John’s—approaches him. Alex can’t answer, because this might be it. Can’t make a noise, can’t nod his head, can’t even blink, but something in him must indicate the affirmative, because she says, “I’m Magdalena Gist. We met at happy hour a couple weeks ago.”

Alex stares for a moment before the memory comes. Meeting John’s new co-workers over drinks—he’d talked a lot, he’d liked them all, although Magdalena had a sense of humor like the bottom of a pit. Magdalena, the senior paramedic on John’s ambulance. Basically John’s boss, although not technically. “Is,” he gets out, before his throat closes up.

“Still in surgery. They’ll call me as soon as they know.”

“Is that good?”

“Not the best, not the worst.” She shivers, wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s freezing out here. I’m going inside.”

Alex slings his backpack over his shoulders and follows, because they’ll call her first. Even if the news is bad he needs to _know_ and he appreciates how she’s not sparing his feelings, not trying to be comforting; he can’t take false hope right now. They enter a big fluorescently-lit room that smells of grease. The cafeteria. Oh, God, he’s so incredibly not hungry; if he gets near the food he’s going to vomit. He grabs the first table he comes to like a piece of flotsam to save himself from drowning and hopes Magdalena will come back for him.

A few minutes later, she does. She has eggs and a blueberry muffin, and she hands the blueberry muffin to him. Alex tears off a piece to show willing but can’t even pretend to want to eat anything right now. Magdalena, on the other hand, starts devouring her eggs. Her seeming nonchalance makes his skin crawl.

“Who was that guy you were yelling at in the ER?” she asks, between bites.

Oh, so she saw that. Alex doesn’t remember her there, but then again, the whole thing is kind of a blur. “Henry Laurens,” he says. “John’s dad.” Alex didn’t think it would be possible for him to feel worse, but he does, because he can’t shake the worry that he just screamed a man away from his possibly dying son’s bedside, and yeah, John hated the guy, but did John really hate him _that_ much? What if John had wanted him to be there after all? What if John is going to _die without his family there because Alex_ —

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Magdalena says, like she’s reading his mind or (more likely) his face. “In the ambulance John was very clear he wanted you. Asked for me to contact you at least twice. Didn’t say shit about his dad.”

“He was _talking_?” Alex cries. His phone alarm goes off, and he jumps out of his skin before silencing it without a second thought. “What… what else did he say? Was he awake the whole time, was he— _you’re_ the one who called me, you were there— _what happened_?”

“Yeah,” Magdalena says, words clipped, eyes hooded. “I was there.” She sighs stares down her eggs for a long moment before beginning to speak. “He… he wouldn’t walk away from the patient, you know? We didn’t have her ready to transport yet. Every. _Single_ training we do…we say...” She swallows hard. “I told him to get out of there. Guy with a gun on the loose, cops running all over, you get out. But John,” she shakes her head, a bizarre smile twisting her lips, “John fucking stayed!”

Alex is half out of his seat, not even sure what words are about to come storming out of his mouth, when Magdalena’s phone rings.

As she raises the phone to her face time slows, curves, stretches to the snapping point. Alex’s whole body floods first hot and then cold, his heart accelerating in a sickening rush—Magdalena’s eyes come up, meeting his, and another wave of panic breaks—

—and then a smile of pure relief spills across her face.

***

After the doctors step out, and the nurses go about their rounds, and even Magdalena leaves (“to hit the nearest liquor store” she says, and Alex doesn’t think she’s joking), Alex sinks into a chair at John’s bedside and tries his best not to break down.

He feels so terribly wrong in this place. Not just because it’s an ICU, though there is that. He’s only been John’s roommate for… a little under a year and a half now. And yeah, they’ve bonded; John in particular has been through hell lately, and Alex has seen him struggling through even when he’s depressed and exhausted and afraid of himself, has been a late-night confidante and a friend and an ally. He’s seen John vulnerable before.

That didn’t prepare him for this. Not for a hospital room empty except for John’s nearly-lifeless body, the machines keeping him alive, and Alex. This is too intimate, this is too much—he’s an intruder, he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be seeing John like this, sickly and still, sliced-open and stitched back together.

Admittedly, _seeing_ is a strong way of putting it. Alex hasn’t been able to look at John since the first glance he caught, half-obscured by doctors and technicians, when he and Magdalena entered in the room. After that he’d focused on what the experts were saying, or Magdalena, or the equipment, or the floor or the ceiling or anything but John’s battered body in the bed, small and so, so alone.

Alex lets out a dry sob and sinks his head in his hands. That’s the key word, isn’t it? _Alone_. Alex remembers, vividly and viscerally, the feeling of waking up in the ICU alone. That’s the fate that awaits John in the next couple days, if Alex can’t keep it together. And if his presence can spare John that nightmare, then in spite of the wrongness and the strangeness of it, in spite of his nerves sparking and jumping like downed power-lines… he can’t _not_ be here.

So he’s staying.

To distract himself from the clenching terror in his gut Alex replays the conversation he’d had with the surgeon. He wants to be able to relate it all to John later, now that it’s expected John will live—although he’ll probably omit the bit where the doctor said _there’s a good chance he’ll get to keep the arm_ and Alex’s knees went out from under him because it hadn’t even occurred to him that there was a chance John might lose it. The memory has a staticky, surreal quality like it’s from some found-footage horror film, even though that conversation probably only happened twenty minutes ago.

Alex sighs and rubs his eyes. If he’d have known he was going to have to deal with this he would have slept last night or the night before or whatever the fuck night that was, he wouldn’t have stayed up working on his presentation for Washington’s class, which starts at 9 a.m.— _fuck_ , what time is it?—no, that doesn’t matter, that doesn’t matter, _keep the arm_ , fuck! He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes until he sees stars.

John. He needs to focus on John right now. Which is going to have to start with getting over this stupid mental block he’s having so he can look at him. Alex is going to be completely worthless here if he can’t handle that.

He starts slow. Hands first. There’s a clunky little pulse oximeter on a finger of John’s uninjured hand, and Alex takes note of the numbers, not because he knows what they mean, but because it feels like doing something; his brain is hungry for data, for information, for how he can _fix_ this.

The heel of John’s wrist is scraped and raw—he must have fallen at some point tonight. _Probably when he was shot_ , Alex thinks, and imagines John crying out, John falling, John in the ambulance, bleeding. Awake, Magdalena had said. And he’d asked for Alex.

God, he must have been so afraid.

Alex has to pause a moment to wait for the sick feeling in his stomach to subside. _Come on, you can do this_ , he urges himself. _You need to be strong for him right now._

An IV snakes into the crook of John’s elbow, deep red, and Alex notes with relief that at least _that_ doesn’t bother him. Even though he hasn’t coped with anything else today particularly well, at least he can still cope with needles and blood.

John’s other arm is in traction, suspended and bandaged and immobilized. The doctor said that the bone was broken into several pieces—they’ll know more later when they do the X-ray, but their initial surgery had been focused on nothing more than stopping the bleeding. Alex very carefully brushes his fingers over John’s injured hand. His fingers are warm, which Alex guesses is a good sign, but he makes no response.

John’s chest rises and falls steadily, the ventilator doing all the work. It’s almost identical to the one Alex was on back in California when he was twelve, and he shudders at the thought, trying to hang onto this room, this place, this Alex, but God, everything feels so surreal, like this room is just a nightmare his twelve-year-old self is about to wake up from. He tells himself _it was years ago_. _You’re fine. It can’t hurt you anymore_ , but then his gaze tracks the breathing tube to John’s face.

For a moment his mind balks, his eyes skittering away. A wave of dizzy panic breaks over him and then subsides, and he swallows and forces his eyes back to John, and reality falls away and breaks through all at once. That’s _really him_ , that’s John lying there, that’s _John_ , only Alex has been there, too, Alex has been in that bed with those tubes and machines, Alex doesn’t just know how it feels, Alex _feels_ it— his big brother carries him into the ER as he clutches his mom’s hand—he can’t stop crying because his head hurts so bad; can only bury his face against his mom’s lap and wish he didn’t exist, except that would be so scary, he doesn’t want, and then he blinks and he’s, where is, in bed but _where_ and there’s something in his mouth, in his throat, and _where’s his mom_ —

Alex’s hand flies up to his mouth, searching for that phantom tube. _It’s not there, it’s not there_ , he tells himself, but his hand moves anyway, and when it finds nothing it stays at his mouth, holding in a scream. There’s no name for this emotion. It’s like his mind is a radio tuned to static with the volume cranked all the way up. His heart is pounding in his ears.

Time passes in one giant gulp.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there before the static fades and he can begin to drag himself back. Closing his eyes, he focuses on the feeling of breath moving in his lungs. He’s alive. He can breathe. Then his toes and the soles of his feet, solid against the ground. Then his hands, the way they feel when he makes fists, when he lets them relax, when he drums his fingers against his legs. His heart steadies moment by moment. At last, he opens his eyes.

Alex’s face is wet. Wearily, he grabs a tissue from the side table and blows his nose.

John hasn’t moved an inch. His chest rises and falls; the rest of him is still. Lately—Alex has to admit—he’s been spending a lot of time staring at John’s face, admiring the little lines around the corners of his mouth when he smiles, or the way the freckles on his forehead move when he raises his eyebrows, or how the muscles of his jaw tense when he’s pissed off. He’s so used to John in motion. To see him brought to a stop, not even an eyelid twitching …well.

It’s not hard to imagine John dead.

The gray cast to John’s skin reinforces Alex’s impression. There’s only one splash of real color in his face, and it’s where his lower lip has split and bled, purple-red and swollen where it’s been pinched between the tube and his teeth. Never mind the bullet wound, the monitors and wires, the IV lines, the deep dark circles around John’s eyes: that little bruise on his lip makes Alex’s heart feel like it’s being squeezed by an angry fist. He knows John’s a grown man and makes his own choices and he _chose_ to put his life on the line—but God, it’s just so unfair that he should be lying in a hospital bed with not a single drop of warmth in his face except this tiny hurt. It makes him look vulnerable, breakable—broken.

He wants to spare John this nightmare. He wants to spare him everything, just wants to take this whole morning and erase it from history. Alex is already hours into this ordeal, but for John it practically hasn’t even begun yet. And if Alex is still so… so freaked out about his time in intensive care and that happened to him years ago, shit, how is John going to feel when he wakes up?

And as Magdalena said, John asked for _him_. When Alex shouted Henry Laurens out of the ER this morning, knowingly or not, he answered. He could have let John’s real family handle all of this—but doing that would have let John down, and he never wants to let John down, not when he trusts him so much. Not when his first thought in the back of an ambulance was to ask for _Alex_.

And God, Alex is the _only one here_ for John. His stomach clenches at the sheer weight of his responsibility. He’s the one making the decisions right now, not Henry Laurens. And he’s the one John’s counting on right now to get everything right.

Alex grabs a chair and drags it close to the bed, sitting down and taking John’s uninjured hand in his. “Hey, John,” he says shakily, “I know you probably can’t hear me right now, and even if you can, you won’t remember, but I just want you to know that I’m here, okay? I’m right here for you and I’m staying as long as you need me. I promise you that, okay?”

He can’t fuck this up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexander's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day continues. But there are a couple slightly brighter spots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your enthusiastic response to Chapter 1! Your comments and your kudos mean the world to me :)  
> I've tried to tag everything that needs a warning, but please let me know if there's something else that warrants tagging.

In the end, there’s nothing he can do but wait, and Alex hates waiting. He looks up everything he can on his phone—about shock, about wound recovery, about shoulder injury rehabilitation—but quickly realizes that he’s burning battery like there’s no tomorrow. He roots around in the bottom of his backpack for his charger and comes up with earbuds, half an old pack of gum, the muffin from this morning, and two dimes.

Shit. His charger’s still back at the apartment. Yes, he could take the half-hour bus ride back, or even spring for an Uber or a cab if he wanted to be fast, but he doesn’t want to take the chance that John might wake up in the ICU alone. Sighing, he turns off his phone, leans back in the chair, and watches the hours crawl past.

He’s almost grateful for the whine of anxiety in the back of his head, because it keeps him from falling asleep and missing some critical detail. Well, that, and the beeps and the sound of traffic: honks and the occasional roar of a motorcycle out the window, squeaky wheels and footsteps and medical-sounding conversations out the door. Hospitals never go completely quiet, even in the middle of the night, and Alex has never been great at tuning out noise. The nurses check on John’s condition frequently, and every time one of them gives their name he repeats it like a ritual until he has it memorized. Just collecting little things—the numbers on the displays, whatever medical information they can tell him—makes him feel more in control.

Eventually they start dialing down the sedation little by little, trying to figure out when they can take John off the ventilator. Sometimes John’s good hand will twitch under Alex’s. Sometimes his eyelashes will even flutter like he’s almost awake, and Alex will call out his name, excited. The first half-dozen times it happens John slips back under almost immediately—but then, finally, late in the afternoon, his eyes open. For a long moment he only stares muzzily up at the ceiling. He blinks, slow and puzzled.

“John!” Alex cries, giddy relief flooding through him. “You’re awake!”

And then John moves. His good hand snakes up, the pulse oximeter clunking against his face as he paws at the ventilator tube.

“Hey, let’s not mess with that,” Alex says, taking his hand and gently pulling it up and away from any essential medical equipment. He has just a split second to feel John’s muscles tense before he takes a sloppy backhand blow to the face, hard plastic knocking just under his eye and clattering to the floor. He cries out in surprise and pain— _shit_ , John’s not in his right mind; he’s in danger of hurting himself. Alex dives for John’s good arm and manages to pin it to the bed. John thrashes like a wild thing, his eyes open and blazing furious at some imaginary threat and _Jesus_ , how is he this strong right now?—and finally, finally, the nurses come pelting in.

***

John’s brain picks up mid-conversation.

“So apparently going totally psycho is a pretty common reaction to anesthesia,” Alex says. A bruise, still in the early stages, is blooming just under his eye. He's sitting by the bed and leaning forward. “Please don’t feel bad.”

John feels a twinge of guilt anyway, although it’s pretty muted compared to general sensation that he's not quite connected to his body. He doesn’t exactly remember his dreams, but he has a few vague impressions that they were weird as all hell. His sense of reality hasn’t quite recovered yet.

“Sorry,” he rasps. His throat feels funny—the ventilator did a number on it—and the oxygen mask further muffles his voice. Alex has to sit about six inches away to hear him. “Can’t b’lieve I punched you.”

“Eh, it was more of a pimp slap than a punch,” Alex chuckles, squeezing John’s left hand, the one that’s not in some weird… suspendy thing, which John should really know the name of. They’ve got a bit of a John’s-hand-sandwich thing going on: Alex’s hand on bottom, John’s holding it, Alex’s other hand on top. It’s nice. Not only is John’s hand warm, it also stops him wondering if maybe Alex is a dream. Which is a serious concern: everything has that kind of wobbly upside-down quality to it. It’s dark outside. Wasn’t it morning? “Mostly I was impressed you could hit that hard. How do you feel?”

He doesn’t feel like he can hit hard. He feels like Alex could reach over and smear him across the bed like a dollop of paint. His throat’s so dry. He wishes they’d let him have water. There’s some medical reason they won’t that he should also know, but can’t quite bring it to mind. “Thirsty.”

Alex nods, his face full of sympathy. “I understand, man, I really do. I can ask a nurse to bring back the sponge again?”

The sponge. Oh yes. Now that Alex mentions it, John remembers the sponge. It had contained about as much moisture as dry cat litter, and been approximately as appealing to put in his mouth.

“John, John, why are you talking about cat litter? I won’t ask about the sponge, I’m sorry.”

John shuts up.

“Other than being thirsty, how do you feel?”

“Pile ‘a paint,” John says.

Alex’s brow furrows in concern. “Sorry, did you say you’re in pain?”

“Nah, not at all. Like, ya got ultr’marine and titanium white and just a lil plippa yellow. ‘S good color. Chill.”

Alex looks puzzled. “You know, you seemed pretty coherent earlier,”—John thinks, _earlier?_ —“but this conversation has taken a turn for the weird.” Alex pats his hand lightly.

“Sorry,” John croaks, closing his eyes and feeling suddenly fragile. He hadn’t been weird on purpose. “I’ll tryta be more…”

“Hey, no, John,” Alex says. The tone of his voice is different, quavery, charged with an emotion John doesn’t recognize. The pressure on his hand increases—not painful, but insistent. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Don’t worry about it right now. Don’t worry about anything. You’re doing great; everybody’s so happy with how you’re doing. And I’m right here if you need me, okay?”

John’s not sure if he actually says okay or if he just means to. But he’s pretty sure his fingers tighten on Alex’s for just a moment before he falls asleep.

***

After John’s hand goes limp between his Alex sighs and runs his hands through his hair. For a moment he just lets himself feel relief. Okay, so the fighting had been terrifying, but Alex would much prefer a fighting John to a dying John.

But the next time he’d woken up he’d been much better. John had taken the news that he was in the hospital calmly. He’d known who Alex was and asked him why he wasn’t in class (Alex had said he’d taken the day off and changed the subject). He’s off the ventilator now and breathing on his own. His injury hasn’t had any late-breaking complications, although the medical staff is still on high alert for a couple things just in case. Yeah, he’d gotten a little incoherent there towards the end of their conversation, but that’s probably just exhaustion and painkillers.

It seems like the crisis is over.

So why does Alex have a nagging feeling that something’s horribly wrong? Why can’t he relax? It he really forgetting something, or is this just another way his charming brain is deciding to inform him that yes, he’s deeply freaked out to be in an ICU again?

If he sits still it’s only going to get worse: he needs something to occupy himself with. Maybe he should make a to-do list. Checking off boxes always makes him feel like he’s in control of his life.

He opens up his phone to write himself a note and notices that despite his best conservation efforts it’s at 10% battery. There’s a little memo pad with hospital letterhead on the side table, so he scribbles on that instead. _1_ , he writes, with some satisfaction, _Buy phone charger_. He draws a neat square next to the words, awaiting a checkmark.

His stomach makes its existence known with a low grumble. Right, he hasn’t eaten in almost a whole day—sometimes when his nerves are really bad he interprets hunger as nausea. Now that John’s showing some positive signs Alex’s digestive system has finally decided to show up for work. He writes, _2\. Get food_ and draws another little square.

Okay, that’s enough of a to-do list for now. Actually, wait.

  1. _Figure out insurance_.



Alex writes in a few empty bullet points below, since he plans to break the task into multiple stages. By the first bullet point, he writes, _figure out how to figure out insurance_ , which will be the step where he learns what all the other steps are. He anticipates a bureaucratic nightmare, which is perfect; he can work off all his nervous energy slicing through red tape. But it’ll probably be smarter to wait until they have a better sense of what kind of bills John will be dealing with. The doctors have already said that they’ll need to do another surgery to repair John’s near-shattered humerus, for instance.

Alex shudders, and his brain finds its sense of self-preservation and skips to a less gruesome thought: it’s too late in the day to start making phone calls, anyway. All the bureaucrats he needs to fight are probably at home eating dinner with their families.

As for the first two items on his list, all Alex has to do is find the hospital convenience store or gift shop or pharmacy or whatever and—and—

 _He forgot to get his meds_ _,_ that’s what the early alarm was for, the one that he turned off when he was talking to Magdalena this morning—he needed to stop by the pharmacy and pick them up and now he’s already missed a dose and—

He dives out into the hallway, waits a couple seconds to stop hyperventilating, and calls Herc.

Herc picks up on the third ring. “Please tell me you’re in the U.S. right now,” Alex blurts.

“Well, as a matter of fact I am.” Herc’s talking _so fucking slow why can’t he talk faster!_

“East coast?”

“Um...approximately?” A tinny voice makes an announcement in the background. Sounds like Herc’s in an airport.

Alex’s hope falters. “Anywhere near D.C.?”

“Potentially? What’s up?”

Alex mouth goes dry at the thought of explaining what’s happening. His orderly to-do list has been blasted away by the hurricane in his head; there’s sirens screaming _where’s his mom_ and _take your meds, take your meds, take your meds_ —

After working his jaw for a couple seconds he eventually gets out, “I need help, Herc.”

Herc’s voice loses its playfulness immediately. “What’s going on?”

“I—I don’t have my meds, I’m at Mercy Hospital, I forgot to pick them up because I had to get to the here as fast as I could and I need to go get them but—but I can’t _leave_ , Herc—”

“Alex, stop. First of all, I’m in SFO right now about to board the redeye to Atlanta. I can get a flight to D.C. from there.”

Alex inhales shakily, tears of relief burning in his eyes. “Okay. Okay, good.”

“Second, I want you take multiple deep breaths and take a moment to organize your thoughts, and then I want you to tell me why you’re at the hospital.”

Alex squeezes his eyes shut, tears spilling over, and the time it takes him to inhale and exhale only frustrates him. “John,” he says, “John’s been shot, and my alarm went off when I was waiting and I just silenced it and I didn’t even think—” He spills out the whole story, word after word, probably half nonsense, but Herc doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t ask any questions, just listens.

“Jesus,” he whispers, when Alex is done. “Okay, Alex, I’m looking up flights right now... I see one that’ll work. I’ll land in nine hours and I’ll call you when I do. In the meantime, if you can, I want you to see if you can pick up your prescription at the hospital pharmacy, okay?”

Alex processes this sentence for a moment. “Oh. Shit. I should have thought of that first.” He sighs deeply, running his hand through his hair again. “I’m sorry I’m such a dumbass, Herc, that’s what I should do—obviously you shouldn’t bother flying out, that’ll cost so much money…”

“Look, man, I was headed that general direction for, uh, other stuff anyway, and my schedule’s flexible. It’s not a problem. I’m coming.”

Alex narrows his eyes. “What ‘other stuff?’”

“Oh, nothing major,” Herc says. “Just visiting friends in Paris for a couple days.”

A memory darts through the back of Alex’s head, too fast to catch. “You’re… you’re flying all the way to Paris just to visit friends for a couple days?”

“Good friends,” Herc says. Alex can practically see him crossing his arms. Herc’s a great poker player—until you know his tells.

“It’s Fashion Week,” he remembers in a rush; Herc had texted him when he’d first been invited. “It’s Fashion Week, and _you have a show_ , oh my _God_ , Herc, how could you even _think_ of missing your show—”

“The show’s not ‘til Friday,” Herc says, sounding very defensive. “I’m flying in early to see other people’s shows and, as I said, catch up with some friends. But since you’re having an emergency—”

“I’m not having an emergency,” Alex says, throwing all the confidence he can summon into his words. “You need to go, you need to be there, this is your shot! If you missed it you’d never forgive me!”

“Eh,” Herc says, and Alex imagines him shrugging. “There will be other shots. I’m adaptable.”

“Fine. _I’d_ never forgive me.” Alex hangs his head and sighs into the phone. “Look, Herc. What can I do to convince you not to come?”

“You don’t have to _do_ anything,” Herc says, a note of exasperation creeping into his even tone. “I won’t come if you don’t want me there.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you here, it’s just that I would rather have you in Paris! Achieving your dreams! And you have better things to be doing with your life than babysit a—an adult!”

“It’s not babysitting, Alex,” Herc says, frustration edging his voice, “it’s—”

“Look,” Alex interrupts, “What you heard at the beginning of this conversation was a brief moment of weakness brought on by mild fatigue and some totally proportionate stress. I’ve gotten it out of my system, and I’m fine now.”

Herc doesn’t reply.

“Come on! You know I’m a pro at this. I could write the Lonely Planet guide to the doctor’s office.” Never mind that the ICU is a totally different beast. If he’s made it this far already, he really will be fine. He will.

“You have a point there,” Herc says. “A small point. But…”

A tinny voice from Herc’s side of the call interrupts him.

“Shit. I have to board like, now.”

“Then board!” Alex cries. “Fly free, big bird! Follow your dreams! Knock their socks off! Break a leg! Break their legs! Steal their socks!”

“Okay, Alex,” Herc laughs. Alex is relieved to be cut off—he was running out of ridiculous things to say. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Okay.” The line goes quiet, and Alex is left staring at his phone. As he watches, it powers down, the bright screen replaced by a low battery symbol. Yeah, that… that feels about right.

There’s a muffled sound from John’s room—is he awake again so soon? Quickly, Alex wipes any traces of tears and snot off on his sleeve and takes a moment to compose his face. John needs somebody steady and constant, somebody who at least seems like they know what they’re doing. Alex is going to be that person. He won’t let himself cry again.

Not where John might see him.

***

John’s eyes are half-open when Alex re-enters the room. “Hey,” Alex says, rushing over and taking his hand, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here—are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Outside, an ambulance gives an angry _BRAAAAAP_! The siren probably woke John up. He blinks a couple times and eventually manages to focus his eyes approximately on Alex’s face. “I punched a guy before,” he says, very seriously.

“Yeah, John, that was me. We’re cool. Don’t worry about it.”

“No,” John says, eyebrows making a little frown of frustration, “ _Before_. When I got my—my teeth done.”

“Oh! You punched a guy coming out of anesthesia after you had your wisdom teeth out?” Shit. Henry Laurens would have known that.

“Tried it,” John says, with a sloppy grin. “Fell over.”

“Huh. So when they put your arm back together I should tell the anesthesiologist to be ready for violence.”

John nods. “Just a violent person, I guess,” he says placidly. “Sometimes y’gotta strap a bitch down, y’know?”

Alex cracks up, and something—maybe his stress, maybe the fact that John’s high as balls and probably won’t remember this tomorrow—makes him give into his impulse for maximum sap. “You know you’re a hero, right?”

“But violent. Like. Deep down.”

Alex fidgets. So much for sap. He doesn’t think of John as violent. Hotheaded, maybe, but never in a way that feels threatening. Passionate, definitely. But… John’s the only one spending time in his own skull.

He changes the subject. “How do you feel right now?”

“Good,” John says, making a clumsy thumbs-up.

“Are you okay with me running down to the pharmacy the next time you fall asleep? Will you be okay if you wake up by yourself? I can ask a nurse to sit with you if—”

“Nah, nah. I’m fine.” John’s looking at him a little funny.

“Do you want me to tell you what’s been happening while you were out? Medically, I mean?”

“Sure,” John says, squeezing Alex’s hand. “Talk away.”

He falls asleep in the first thirty seconds, a snore rasping in the back of his throat. Which… wasn’t exactly what Alex intended, but it’s certainly convenient. Alex smooths down the wrinkles in John’s blankets and gives his good hand a pat goodbye.

The hospital, like all hospitals, is a maze that would baffle Daedalus himself, but at least there are clear signposts at every junction that point the way to the pharmacy. Alex strides purposefully through the halls so he can get back to John as quickly as possible.

This late at night the hospital pharmacy isn’t nearly as deserted as Alex had expected, but the line to speak to the pharmacist is at least manageable, and it’s the same chain he normally goes to, so they’ve got his information on file. They won’t be able to get his prescriptions ready until tomorrow morning, though. Alex forces out a thank-you and puts a 16-ounce refill pack of hand sanitizer and six packs of Emergen-C into his basket, even though he’s pretty sure it doesn’t work (he shouldn’t have skipped his meds, he shouldn’t have skipped his meds, fuck, fuck, fuck.)

Alex shakes himself. He’s aware that his nerves are going haywire on him, but that doesn’t change that he wants to give every potentially-sick person in this pharmacy—and they’re in a hospital, so literally everyone is potentially sick—a million miles of personal space. _Come on_ , he snarls at that fearful, irrational part of himself. _Get your shit together. We’ve got a to-do list to finish_.

Of course, the phone charger costs $30, which is extortionate, but Alex has no other choice. He throws it in his basket along with the Emergen-C and the hand sanitizer. Okay, good. Now food. Granola bars and Cheez-its? He can eat those.

While he’s giving the aisles a quick once-over for anything he might be forgetting he clips his hip against a brightly-colored bin. It’s full of tightly-rolled plush blankets: some are baby blue with white sailboats, some light green with yellow ducklings, and some baby pink with bunnies. Just looking at them makes the tight knot of stress in his chest relax a little. He knows instantly that he’s getting one.

Alex considers the bunnies for a moment, because he likes bunnies and the association with extreme softness, but he figures John wouldn’t appreciate the pink so much, his occasional inexplicable wearing of salmon-colored shorts aside. Light green wins, then, because baby ducklings are also soft. He throws the blanket in the basket, races through the self-checkout, and makes his escape.

***

When Alex arrives back at the hospital room with his two bags of shopping, John’s still asleep. The part of Alex that had been expecting disaster while he was gone can’t quite believe it, but he can’t bear to wake John up and make sure he’s fine; he still looks haggard.

Alex squares his shoulders. To-do list. He has a to-do list. Well, technically he’s finished his to-do list other than the whole insurance thing, which is going to have to wait until tomorrow, but he figures that _buy phone charger_ and _buy food_ can easily be interpreted to encompass actually plugging in his phone and eating some food. His hunger seems to have dissipated on its own; it does that sometimes, if he doesn’t eat long enough. He’ll force himself to eat something if it doesn’t come back eventually, but right now—phone it is.

His phone buzzes in his hand when he plugs it in, and a moment later it revives enough to give him two breaking news notifications. Fuck, what the fuck is this, what the fuck is wrong with today…

One celebrity has died and one hoax bomb threat has been called in on some trade summit in southeast Asia. Okay. Okay, that’s not so bad. Once he’s checking the news, though, his brain goes on news-checking autopilot. CNN’s still freaking out about the bomb threat and asking how it affects the search for MH370, the BBC has a more measured headline on the same event, and reddit’s full of cat pictures. As far as he can tell, there hasn’t been a war or an economic collapse or another mass shooting.

Alex checks Politico. There’s a corruption case (open and shut), a sex scandal (not as bad as you might expect, from the headlines)—and a small headline, near the bottom of the page, that reads _Henry Laurens’ son shot in D.C._

He opens the article. It’s not the two-line non-story he expected, either.

Holy fuck, John’s dad held a press conference. Politico’s embedded the video from some local station. Alex hurriedly retrieves his earbuds from his backpack and presses play.

Henry Laurens is wearing a dark suit, a little ill-fitting, and his hair looks slightly disheveled—very unusual for him. “Regrettably,” he says, “I am here to confirm the reports from Twitter this morning. My eldest son, John, a paramedic, was shot in the course of his duties in Washington, D.C. early this morning. His condition is still uncertain.” There’s just a hint of unsteadiness to his voice. The senator continues, “I love my son very much, and I’m so proud of his heroic actions this morning. Please, keep him in your prayers.” _Prayers_ cracks his voice and nearly his composure; he seems to struggle for several seconds. A sympathetic knot gathers in Alex’s throat—at least, until the senator chokes out, “John has requested privacy at this time.”

Alex lets loose an involuntary cry of outrage at the sheer hypocrisy of that, immediately regretting it when he remembers John’s trying to sleep. He glances up, but John’s still out.

The video cuts back to the anchor. “Henry Laurens lost his wife and younger son to a car accident eight years ago,” she says. “Let’s hope the Laurens family hasn’t been hit with another tragedy.”

Just like that, the knot returns to Alex’s throat. The anchor bows her head, waits the necessary half-second somber pause, and looks back up. “Now let’s open it up to our panel! Nadia, you cover Senate politics, the budget vote’s coming up, you’ve gotta be all _over_ this. How will this affect the amendments that Senator Laurens has proposed?”

Normally Alex would be thrilled to watch a budget debate, but he’s too busy stalking out into the hallway, muttering, “I do not feel sorry for Henry Laurens, I do not feel sorry for Henry Laurens, I do not feel sorry for Henry Laurens.” He finds the nursing station and retrieves the poster sternly warning about the consequences of patient privacy breaches.

“Fuck _yes_ , John requested motherfucking privacy,” he mutters, trying to pin the poster to John’s door, but the door isn’t really having it. “From _you_ , you fucking scumbag scheming opportunistic two-faced vampire _politician_!” Continuing the rant in an unbroken stream, he holds down the pin and presses with his thumbs until they turn bloodless, but the pin refuses to bite.

“Tape?” a nurse asks from behind him, and Alex’s feet actually leave the ground. The pin drops to the floor.

“Jesus, you scared me,” he says, diving to pick up the pin. “Sorry. Uh, tape is good.”

She pulls a roll of medical tape out of her pocket, and soon the poster is prominently displayed on the outside of the door.

“So, I can’t help but ask,” the nurse says, nodding towards it, “…have you had any privacy concerns while you’ve been here?”

“Uh…” Shit. Alex doesn’t want to start a witch hunt among John’s colleagues to figure out who told Henry what was going on. He settles on a half-truth. “His dad’s famous. I’m just trying to watch out for him, you know? There’s so much that I”—he clears his throat—“that I can’t really help, I just wanted to...”

The nurse gives him a look so sympathetic it makes his eyes well up. He looks away before things can go any further. Jesus, why is he _reacting_ like this, what’s wrong with him?

A gentle hand settles on his shoulder, and he squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to be perfectly still. Her words are soft. “You must be exhausted. I’ll roll in a cot for you, okay?”

Alex swallows around the pain in his throat and nods. He feels the whoosh of air from John’s door opening, and when he opens his eyes the nurse has gone. He sighs, wiping the unshed tears away. Sometimes he wishes people—the nurse, Herc—wouldn’t be so kind. It makes him feel soft and small and vulnerable in all the worst ways. At least he didn’t actually cry this time.

When he steps inside the nurse and John are chatting quietly as she pokes and prods at the fingers on his bad hand. Alex watches them in a daze. He’s got to learn this all—he needs information, he needs to know everything that’s happening, but his brain is just going so slow right now. He hasn’t slept in… well, since 8 a.m. yesterday. A little over thirty-six hours.

The nurse makes some notes in John’s chart and leaves, and Alex shifts nervously in his seat and clears his throat. It’s John’s right to decide whether and how he wants to tell his dad how he’s doing. All of this press conference stuff doesn’t change that—it’s just a smoke and mirror show that that Henry Laurens cooked up so the press doesn’t realize that he’s not getting within a mile of John’s hospital room if Alex has anything to say about it.

Well. Unless John wants him here after all.

“Hey, John. John, are you still awake?”

“Mnh?” John’s eyes flutter open. His head lolls towards Alex, a lazy grin spreading across his face. “What’s up?”

“Uh. I’ve, uh. I’ve got some... news.” Alex takes a deep breath. “Your dad found out what’s going on.”

What little warmth John had recovered drains from his face. “Don’t let him in here,” he stammers, “Don’t—I can’t talk to, I’m, my head’s a mess right now and my arm and he’ll, he’ll be, and I just—”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Alex takes John’s good hand in one hand and lays his other hand on top. “He’s not coming. He’s not coming, okay? I promise you that. I’m right here. _I’m_ here.”

“Right,” John whispers. He squeezes Alex’s hand back, and Alex is suddenly flooded with an unsteady warmth. It’s good to be here, standing between John and danger. It’s good to have someone to defend, someone he cares about this much. He hates that John’s in pain and not-quite-all-there and vulnerable right now, but he loves the feeling of having someone to protect. “You’re...”

Alex waits for the end of the sentence, but a few moments later John’s breathing changes, and the tension fades from his mouth and forehead. He’s asleep. Alex is a little envious—he’s pretty sure the only way he could sleep that fast is if somebody took a shovel to the back of his head. He watches John for another long moment, making sure he’s really out, before turning to his phone.

He has an email from Washington from this morning. The subject line is **you okay?**

Alex laughs out loud at that. Is he okay? Is he _okay_? What the hell kind of question is that?

The tone of professional, stifled concern in Washington’s email sobers him up a little. Right. Right. This morning he missed the presentation worth half his Constitutional Law grade. Any other day that fact would be sending him into a panic—or, more accurately, any other day he would _never have missed that presentation_ —but apparently he’s used up his entire supply of panic for the day. Where that emotion would usually sit there’s a yawning chasm of exhaustion. He’s dizzy with it.

Still, he needs to reply to this email before he falls asleep. Washington is certainly going to want to know why his protégé missed the most important assignment of his class without so much as a peep of notice.

_Dear sir,_

The door opens, and the nurse from before wheels in a narrow cot. Alex flashes her a quick thumbs-up and even manages a tight smile so she’ll go away without any more unnecessary comforting gestures.

If he climbs into the cot he’s going down, so he stays in the hard plastic chair and writes.

_Dear sir,_

_Thank you for your concern. I hope that my absence hasn’t worried you unduly. I am well._

There. He’s acknowledged there might be a reason for Washington to be concerned and he’s reassured him on that front, but he hasn’t presumed too far. Good.

The thought of Washington, strangely enough, reminds him that he still hasn’t eaten. He peels back the cardboard flap on the box of Cheez-its and shovels them into his mouth as he writes. He’s had worse dinners, he thinks, although not recently.

_I sincerely apologize for missing class and, while I certainly do not expect a chance to make up the assignment, there are extenuating circumstances that I hope you will take into account when determining my grade._

Alex frowns and looks back over the sentence, immediately deleting _when determining my grade_. He doesn’t like _extenuating circumstances_ , either. _Extenuating_ is a little too close to _excuse_. Is the _sincerely_ overdoing it? Surely you don’t need to note that your apology is sincere? He deletes it, but then the rhythm’s off. He types it back in.

Even with the bit about grades gone, this seems dangerously close to point-grubbing. Except, fuck, who is he kidding, this presentation was worth half his grade. He’s not just point-grubbing, he’s point _gouging_ , and if he doesn’t, he’s going to fail the class that he absolutely must pass. He can’t afford to retake anything. His margin for error is zero. And the worst thing is, if he fails, nobody will be surprised. They’ll pat him on the back and admit that nobody expected him to get this far anyway and Alex will stab someone, or have a stroke, or maybe both.

He swore to himself he’d never be this kind of person, relying on personal favors and relationships to get out of trouble, but that’s exactly what he’ll be doing with this email. So really, he should scrap the whole thing, start over again. _Hey, Wash, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. Remember how you’ve known me since I was twelve? Remember how you’ve written me great letters of rec for every scholarship and position I’ve applied for? Remember how I owe you everything? Well, guess what!? I need another favor! Yeah, that’s right, another one! I just need one little do-over. Just lower your expectations for me. Give me a break you wouldn’t give anyone else._

Alex’s stomach turns over. He can’t do it. He needs to just write this like he would to any other professor and hope Washington takes the hint and treats him like he would any other student. He’ll explain his circumstances drily and impartially and let Washington evaluate the situation himself.

_My roommate was severely injured in the course of his work as an EMT early this morning before class and I’ve been with him at Mercy Hospital ever since._

God, this is terrible writing. This is terrible all-around. This whole _day_ is terrible. But he’s almost through with it. The sight of the cot spurs him on, gives him the tiny burst of energy he needs to keep typing.

_I’m staying with him because he doesn’t have anybody else since I scared his dad off by threatening to sue. John’s stable now and they’re saying that he’ll get to keep his arm but he’s going to need at least one more surgery and_

Fuck. At the words _he doesn’t have anybody else_ his vision blurs and doubles and blurs some more until the world’s nothing but a watery wash. He wipes his eyes on his sleeve and finishes the email with shaking fingers.

_Best wishes,_

_A. Hamilton_

When he tries to scroll up to the top of the email so he can proofread it, he accidentally hits “send.”

“Fucking typical,” he says, and sets down his phone with a clatter. He kicks off his shoes and clambers into the cot. It might as well be a king-sized bed in a luxury hotel, that’s how good it feels to lay down.

He can’t. Fucking. Sleep. There’s nothing left for him to do, no more emergencies to deal with, but anxiety still gnaws at his heart and his stomach. His body refuses to go down, ready to react to any threat that might appear.  Plus, normally he sleeps with a quilt at the very least. The room’s warm, but with just the sheet over himself he feels… exposed.

It takes him a good twenty minutes of tossing and turning before he remembers the blanket he bought. Well, he’d meant to give it to John, but John will understand. He rips it out of the packaging and wraps it around himself like a burrito, and that’s how he finally, finally falls asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks, as always, to herowndeliverance :)

Alex gasps and chokes awake far, far too early in the morning with no idea what’s set his heart racing. Usually waking up the first time in a new place disorients him for the first couple moments, but not today: he remembers almost immediately that he’s in John’s hospital room. It’s still dark outside, the slightest tinge of yellow touching the undersides of the low gray clouds out the window, and the room’s chilly. Alex rolls over and is trying to tug the sweaty sheets and blanket back around his shoulders when John asks, “Whazzat?”

Alex freezes, awash with guilt that he woke John up with his tossing and turning. Maybe if he stays still, John will slip back asleep in the dark and quiet.

After a moment John’s voice comes again, uncertain, maybe even afraid. “Alex?”

“I’m right here, John,” Alex says, brutally squashing the lingering nightmare feelings as he throws his legs over the side and hops out of cot. The floor freezes his feet right through his socks, and he wraps the fluffy blanket over his shoulders to warm himself. He peers closer to John, trying to read his face for any signs of distress or pain, but it’s difficult to tell in the dark. “What do you need? Does something hurt?”

There’s a long pause as John contemplates Alex’s questions and Alex contemplates summoning a nurse. At last, he asks, “Are those ducks?”

Alex chuckles in relief. “Yeah, John,” he says, taking the blanket off his shoulders and holding it up so John can see them better. “Yeah, those are ducks.”

“They’re really nice,” John sighs.

“You think so?” Alex says. “Because I got this blanket for you, actually.” He grips it uncertainly, fingers sinking into the plush. In the stark background of the hospital room, amidst the antiseptic smell and the white, white sheets, it seems... infantile. Not to mention, it’s already seen more than its fair share of nightmare sweat, in addition to having been twisted around so much by his thrashing that it now looks like it's literally been through the wringer. Alex has bought blankets at garage sales that looked better than this.

Nevertheless, a smile creeps onto John's face. "For me?" He moves like he's about to reach out for it, in spite of the tubes and bandages entangling both his arms, and Alex hurriedly lofts it up and lets it drift down over him. It really is absurdly small—John’s feet stick out at the end.

"So soft," John murmurs. He tilts his head at an awkward angle, nuzzling at the plush. Alex laughs and, before he quite realizes what he's doing, picks up a corner of the blanket and rubs it gently against John's cheek. Thirty seconds into it he remembers where he is, what he’s doing, but also—John’s still smiling softly, nuzzling at the blanket in his hand as he drifts back to sleep.

This is weird. This is really weird. John’s definitely high as fuck right now. It seems innocent enough but—would John be doing this if he were sober? If he knew how Alex has been looking at him lately?

Absolutely not. Alex drops the blanket, disgusted with himself.  

John mewls at the loss of contact and turns his face into the pillow, nuzzling against it once or twice before apparently giving up. Alex turns away, grinding his teeth. Memories from yesterday surface, stained by revulsion—how he’d held John’s hand, watched him sleep, soothed his worries. It had felt so natural. As if he had the right. As if he wasn’t an intruder here. John had placed him a position of absolute trust, and what had he done with it? Used it as an opportunity to fucking _hold hands_.

Alex has never had a strong sense of self-preservation, but what he does have is pride. The world seems to get some sick enjoyment from throwing him to the ground, but he'll never give it the satisfaction of seeing him flinch; he's spent too much time weak to be comfortable showing weakness. Washington had seen it, all those years ago—had warned him—that the stigma around H.I.V. might prove a weakness that others could exploit, that Alex would be vulnerable to abuse by anyone promising love and acceptance.

And so Alex keeps his heart well-hidden. Lonely he may be, but at least nobody can use that against him, because nobody knows how lonely he gets.

Except maybe his strategy's backfired. John’s completely unaware of how thoroughly he’s occupied Alex’s emotions—but God, Alex is vulnerable to him all the same: vulnerable in the way he can’t stop thinking about what might have happened to him; vulnerable in his unspeakable, unthinkable dread that this might happen again; terrified that he might wake up one day and John might not be near.

Alex retreats to a plastic chair and hangs his head. This is a mess. This is an absolute mess, and he should never have let his... infatuation get this far without telling John about it—he worries their friendship for the past couple months has been tainted by false pretenses. But he hadn’t wanted to tell John—had wanted to draw out, for as long as he could, the amount of time they had together before John was standing before him fidgeting and unwilling to meet his eyes, too kind to say, _look, Alex, I just can’t be with somebody like you_ and too honest to lie. Most likely he wouldn’t want to be friends anymore after that. Maybe he’d even ask Alex to move out.

Deep down, though, Alex doesn't believe that John would do that. God knows he can be petty, and moody, and unthinkingly snobbish, but Alex believes that John is _good_ , in some fundamental moral place that fear can't touch. Where it counts, where it really counts, John will lay it all on the line no matter the cost to himself. Hell, this whole situation is proof of that. If John likes him back, he's not going to let Alex's diagnosis stand in his way.

So maybe... maybe Alex is just afraid that John won't like him back. Maybe his "strategy" was just cowardice all along.

For just a moment, he makes himself be brave. He imagines what it would feel like to open the door after a long day and have John on the other side ready with an embrace. His warmth and the old hoodie he wears around the house and the strength of his arms and...

Alex's eyes go to John's wounded arm, and his heart lurches. _I don't care_ , he wills. If he could have John's breath on his skin, John's pulse under his fingers, he wouldn't give a flying fuck about his arms, except insofar as they affected John's well-being. Really that's all he wants: for John to be well, and happy, and with Alex.

Even thinking about that possibility hurts like grinding ice between his teeth, because it makes Alex feel _normal_ to have a dream like that, and he's learned time and time again in life that he's not normal. He'd be a bad enough date as a semi-broke workaholic with a dead illegal immigrant mom, a dead disappeared dad, and an appetite for confrontation. Throw in the HIV on top of that, and his chances of making anybody happy drop to basically zero. It’s not real. It’ll never happen. That’s the kind of dream people like him don’t get to have.

And if he has to choose between John being well and happy and John being with him? He'll choose John every time.

Really, Alex just needs to stop being so fucking selfish. John doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to be a symbol or a dream of the normal life Alex wishes he could have. He’s a person, and what’s more, he’s massively vulnerable himself right now—way more vulnerable than Alex is.

So it’s time for Alex to stop protecting himself—his heart, his dreams, his _stupid fucking crush_ —and start protecting John. No more fluffy blankets; no more maudlin fucking declarations about how he’s _here_ for John; no more touching unless it’s absolutely necessary, and especially no more holding hands. He needs to be John’s friend right now: an ally, an advocate, a champion. Absolutely nothing more than that.

And after all this is over, and John’s better, and he doesn’t need Alex’s help anymore, Alex will grow a pair or a spine or some guts or whatever essential part of anatomy he’s missing, and tell John how he feels.

***

John floats through a morning full of scanners and specialists and surgeons in a haze of painkillers. The first order of business is to transfer him out of the ICU. This involves being pushed through the hallway, which is pretty fun! Then he has to talk to all these people who are trying to figure out what to do with his arm.

Alex is there, too, but he seems farther away than he did before. Occasionally he’ll prompt John to answer one of the doctors’ questions, and John will drag himself up out of the haze to speak. More often Alex will ask the doctor a question himself, something that probably should have occurred to John, and John will perk up for a moment at the sound of his voice. But Alex always seems to draw back away. John misses the gentle pressure of his hand, anchoring him to the here and now. He misses his voice, saying… John can’t quite remember what he said. But the tone had been enough.

He knows enough to realize he’s pretty impaired. It bothers him, that he can be having a conversation with a doctor one second and completely spaced out the next. At one point he only realizes he’s repeating something he said earlier when a little furrow of worry appears between Alex’s eyebrows, and he cuts off mid-sentence, embarrassed. Mostly he smiles and nods his way through the morning, making little noises of comprehension or saying things like “Got it, thanks,” whenever anybody looks at him expectantly.

And then his doctor asks him which option he’d prefer for his shoulder reconstruction and John has zero idea what the fuck she’s talking about.

“Huh?”

The doctor and Alex both look at him in dismay. Finally, Alex turns to the doctor and says, “Could you give us a little while to discuss this?”

The doctor nods. “It’s an important decision. I’ll come back later today to hear your thoughts, John.”

John bewilderedly shakes her hand. Alex and the doctor wrap up, Alex thanking her for her time.

The door clicks shut, muting the sound of people chatting in the hallway. “So,” Alex asks, “how much of this morning did you actually understand?” His tone isn’t judgmental, just curious. “Were you just… faking?”

John feels stupid, and ashamed, and angry with himself. Yeah. Yeah, he was faking. That’s a politician’s kid’s talent if there ever was one, a habit gained from years of interaction with his dad, where confusion was a sign of weakness and weakness was to be concealed at any cost. He’d worked so hard to break himself of the happy-face habit in college only to revert at the worst possible time. Even now, part of him wants to lie and tell Alex that everything’s wonderful, that he understood it all. But the rest of him is furious with that part of him.  “I can’t think straight,” he groans, because even now, even here, he can’t muster the courage to admit his own failings. He'd rather look weak than look like a jackass—in front of Alex, at least. “I’m not even awake. My _head_...”

Alex is silent for a moment, and John wonders if he needs to say it again. But then Alex says, “Would you like me to ask the nurses to turn your painkillers down?”

“ _Yes_ ,” John says.

***

He underestimated how much this would hurt, but in his defense, he’s never been shot before and therefore had no frame of reference. The nurses have swapped out his drip for a little button that he can press to get painkillers whenever he wants. He’s been holding off for over an hour now, long enough now that he feels a lot more together—but there are some obvious drawbacks. Besides the pain in his arm, the comfortable haze of the morning is almost completely gone, replaced by an exhausted ache that permeates his whole body. It doesn’t seem fair that he can be this sore after spending the last couple days in bed. On the plus side, his brain is working well enough to tell him that he’s probably sore from all the lactic acid his poor hypoxic muscles cranked out while he was in shock. Physiology in action. Pretty cool!

“Okay,” he says, looking to Alex and pleased at how readily his eyes focus, “you were taking notes this morning, right? I think I saw you taking notes.”

“I took so many notes,” Alex says from the chair at his bedside, holding up a memo pad covered in dense black writing. “You wouldn’t believe how small my handwriting is on these.”

“Okay. Read all of it to me.”

“All of it?” Alex repeats. “John, there’s a lot of information and you’re in no shape to… look, basically there are a few options for the surgery and we just have to pick—”

“All of it,” John growls.

Alex doesn’t try to dissuade him again, or tell him he’s being unreasonable. He just starts in on their first appointment that morning, and John listens carefully and asks questions when anything is unclear, and tries to ignore the throbbing pain in his shoulder.

The worst part—as he discovers when Alex painstakingly outlines their choices—is there’s no clear best option. Each one has its own associated risks and chances of success, and there’s no guaranteed safe path. All he can do at this point is consider the evidence, understand the risks as best he can, and make the call based on that.

At one point, when they’ve been talking for what feels like a long time and he’s almost made up his mind, he tries to shift a little to ease the discomfort of being in one position all day. Agony rolls through like nothing he’s ever felt before, originating from his shoulder and burning all the way down his arm. An inhuman sound escapes him, and closes his eyes and slams his good hand reflexively against the bed.

When the pain finally begins to subside he realizes that Alex is pinning his good wrist down, keeping him from flailing around and losing his IV _._ John takes a few ragged breaths, willing his body to relax. Then he turns hand slowly palm-up, interlacing his fingers with Alex’s— _I’m okay, I’m okay_.

For a moment Alex’s hand stays motionless. But then it squeezes John’s hand back, and John hangs on and grinds through the pain, second by second.

“Look, John, you just need to press the button, okay?” Alex says. His voice is strained; John wonders if he squeezed his hand too hard.

It takes John a few seconds to process his words. “No, no, no, I don’t wanna—”

“John, it’s fine!” Alex sounds frustrated; if John opened his eyes right now, he knows he’d see a deep furrow between his eyebrows. “Look, you’re stubborn and you’re tough as fuck, I respect that, but you’re not doing yourself any favors by trying to stick this out.”

“I’m not—I’m not trying—” Everything’s moving too fast, and he thought it would be easier without the meds but with his arm like this he can hardly think—and he’s not ready, he hasn’t picked yet—

The button appears in his good hand, Alex gently guiding his fingers. “Here you go, John, just—”

“No! I need to know what’s _happening_ to me,” John bursts out. He opens his eyes and locks them on Alex’s. “Please, Alex, please, you gotta understand, I—”

Alex freezes, lips parted. John keeps eye contact, willing him to get the message, even if he hasn’t said it right—or, failing that, to just slow down and give John a moment to _think_.

Alex’s eyes go wide, and for a fraction of a second he looks horrified. Maybe that’s not _message received_ but it’s certainly a result. “Okay, okay,” he blurts, “Let’s stop. I hear you. I’m listening.”

John lets go the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, Alex hovering anxiously overhead. He heaves in air and lets it out, some of the pain leaving with it. His racing heart slows. “No button yet.”

“No button yet,” Alex repeats, nodding frantically. “Trust me, John, I understand. I’ve been where you are. I know how you feel.”

John seriously doubts that, but he has more important things to argue about. “Go over what the second doctor said about rehabilitation schedules again.”

They were almost finished going through all the pros and cons when John made his ill-advised attempt at movement, and both of them want to get through the rest as fast as they can. Still, by the time John’s made his decision he’s sweating through his hospital gown, hair sticking to his forehead.

He hashes through the most important facts with Alex one last time, laying out his reasoning, double-checking that it’s sound. Alex agrees with him, which fills him with confidence. Alex promises he’ll pass John’s choice along to the surgical team as soon as he can, if John’s not awake when they come back.

“Great,” John says, clenching the button under his thumb and sighing as the painkiller starts to kick in. First to go is the whole-body ache; it floats away like dirt in a hot bath. He doesn’t let go of the button. Because seriously, fuck consciousness right now. Fuck. It. “Ask if they can do it soon, ‘kay?”

“I will,” Alex says. He sits close—John’s eyes are going out of focus, but he can still see his face. Alex doesn’t pull back like he’d been doing earlier this morning. John’s grateful for that. “I’ll get it scheduled as soon as I can.”

“Good. Get it over with,” John says, and Alex laughs. His head’s swimming. After another moment, the machine beeps at him reproachfully.

“Sounds like you’re locked out,” Alex says.

John looks at it mournfully. “But I wanna sleep.”

“I doubt that’ll be a problem.”

John tries his best to scowl in Alex’s direction, but it’s a hard thing to do when his eyes are already sliding shut.

***

After Alex has tracked down someone from John’s surgical team and communicated his decision to her, the first thing he does is go straight for the pharmacy. Of course, he speed-walks like an idiot and nearly collides with somebody’s grandpa going around a corner. After that he’s a little more careful.

Due to what is clearly divine intervention, there’s no line at the pharmacy. His meds are ready. Thank God. His hands shake as he takes the slim orange bottle from the pharmacist. It’s been almost sixty hours at this point—he hasn’t gone that long without antiretrovirals since he—since he—

He shudders. Although all the surgery talk with John this morning was a pretty effective distraction from his own issues, his mind still feels staticky from yesterday. For a moment he just stands there with his heart pounding, waiting to be struck down by a memory from his twelve-year-old self. But the moment slips past, and then another, and another, and he remains in the pharmacy. With steady hands he unlocks the childproof cap and dry-swallows a pill. While he _knows_ it’s just the placebo effect, _knows_ that meds don’t work that fast, he instantly feels a little bit better.

On an impulse, he swallows another pill. There. Two doses, to make up for the two he missed. He even considers taking three, but decides to wait until he would have had his normal dose. Tomorrow morning, then.

Fifteen minutes later, hugging a toilet and vomiting up the Cheez-Its and granola he scarfed down for… breakfast? lunch? while John was dozing between appointments, he’s at least grateful that he decided against that third pill. Eventually one of John’s nurses—Octavian, Alex’s brain helpfully supplies—scrapes him off the bathroom floor and gets him upright in a chair and sipping Pedialyte until he feels marginally human again.

“Take care of yourself, now,” he winks, as Alex stands on only slightly unsteady legs. “Wouldn’t want to have to admit you, too!”

“Ha,” Alex says. “Hahaha. Yeah. What a nightmare,” and dashes back to John’s room before the guy gets any more bright ideas. He prays John’s still sleeping. Turning the handle gently so it doesn’t click, he ghosts into the room and shuts the door quiet as a whisper.

Yep, still sleeping. A lot of the color has come back to John’s face, and his brow isn’t furrowed with pain like it was before. All good signs. Alex’s anxiety still charges him with frantic energy, but at least it has less to feed on. He brushes his teeth in the room sink to get rid of the lingering vomit taste, and the ritual settles him a little.

The to-do list beckons. It’s well before 5 p.m.—perfect for phone calls. He’s decided to explore a couple other options for money before he tackles the insurance company, although he’ll definitely be talking to them at some point. First he calls the police department to see if he can get the official report on what the hell happened when John was shot (he’s a little more diplomatic in his language with the receptionist), and then he follows that up with a call to the D.C. Crime Victims Compensation Fund to see if they’re interested in helping out with any bills and what kind of paperwork that would involve. He makes a quick trip out to the reception area to get the hospital fax number and another to collect a pile of forms to go with the pile of medical records John’s already accumulated.

Attacking the forms gives him enormous satisfaction. He loses himself a little in the rote task, and the pile of forms to be completed shrinks and shrinks.

“Hey, Alex” John slurs. Alex jumps; he’d been so focused he hadn’t even realized John had woken. “Oh. Oh man. You look like shit.”

“Probably just the black eye,” Alex says, keeping his tone light. “How do you feel?”

“Awesome,” John says, which is… well, at least the drugs are working, although given John’s skill at pretending everything was totally fine this morning, when information was apparently leaking out his ears as fast as it entered, Alex is inclined to be skeptical. He’ll keep an eye on him, make sure he’s acting like someone who actually feels awesome. “You told the surgeon?”

“Yeah, you’re all booked up. Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

John nods, looking content and rested. Alex just wants to keep that look on his face, and as accomplished as he feels about getting all those forms done, there are a lot more immediate things he can do for John now that he's awake. “Hey, wanna see if we can find a nature documentary on TV?”

“Yeah,” John grins, healthy color blooming across his cheekbones. “Yeah, I'd love that!”

A little part of Alex squirms with pleasure that he knew just how to get that reaction; nature documentaries are John’s comfort shows. Last spring John was having a really rough time of it, and Alex remembers getting home from class almost every night to hear to the soothing tones of David Attenborough drifting out of John’s room.

He turns on the TV in the corner and lets John flick through the channels. National Geographic has some archaeology thing; Discovery Channel’s _Diesel Brothers_ is a massive disappointment in all respects; PBS is showing the news. John looks crestfallen.

“Okay, shitty wifi Netflix it is,” Alex says, and just like that, John’s smile returns. Wow. This is way easier than he thought it would be. He plugs his laptop in and boots it up.  “Mountains? Shallow seas? Jungles?”

“Jungles,” John says immediately.

At first Alex props the laptop in a chair, but John has to crane his neck uncomfortably to see it, which is no good. He elevates John’s bed and gently settles the computer on his legs instead, making sure there’s a pillow underneath so his laptop’s shit battery doesn’t burn him. “Good?”

“We’re good,” John smiles, and Alex flicks off the lights. “Okay, so the thing you gotta know about jungles,” John continues, talking over the introductory horn fanfare, “The thing you gotta…they’re amazing, okay? They like, make their own clouds and shit, it’s ridiculous. I know that they don’t like talking about conservation so directly on this show but there’s these palm oil plantations in Indonesia and the oil industry is really being nuts in Ecuador and if one tree falls in the forest it only takes a couple years to regrow everything because they’re amazing and there’s a really cool thing later in the show about it but if you cut down a lot of trees then it’s like… it’s like a web, you know, metaphorically, like, everything’s connected so—”

“Yeah, John,” Alex says, with great affection, pulling up a chair and settling in at John's side. Surprise left-wing political rants were one of the things that endeared John to him early on, back when he had no idea who the hell this new roommate of his was, with his dinged-up MacBook and his southern drawl and his giant flag. The fact that John’s attempting just such a rant now, no matter how garbled, makes Alex believe, for the first time since John was shot, that everything’s going to be okay somehow. The doctors are going to patch up John's shoulder perfectly tomorrow, and John will be back at work in a month, and all the bills will be paid, and Alex won't fail any classes, and this morning's nightmare will be the last.

All the shit Alex has gone through over the last couple days pales in comparison to John’s pain—and if Alex can get John through this, all that shit will be worth it. Right now, with John propped up next to him—laptop light dancing across his face, grinning broadly, in the middle of a disjointed but impassioned lecture on conservation biology—Alex feels like he might succeed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: this chapter contains an extended discussion of suicide.
> 
> Thanks very much to herowndeliverance and thanks to all of you for your comments and your support <3

Evidently John’s feeling chatty, because he keeps up a rambling commentary on _Planet Earth_ all through the birds of paradise, the monkeys, the—the—

“That looks an awful lot like a frog orgy,” Alex says drily.

“Man, if you think _frogs_ have orgies you should see _snakes_ ,” John says, and of course that’s when the nurse walks in. She doesn’t seem fazed, just gives John a quick check-up and asks if they’d both like to order dinner.

Hospital food. Well, it’s not like Alex is going to be in the mood for Cheez-its again anytime soon. “I’ll… I’ll give it a try,” he says, and John nods.

Between the new challenge of eating left-handed and the difficulty of balancing the computer on his lap, John doesn’t stand much of a chance against the spaghetti. Alex pauses the episode and sets his laptop aside before it can take a dive for the floor or get covered in marinara sauce or both.

At the first plop of pasta onto his hospital gown John looks down with dismay.

“I’m sure the gown has seen worse,” Alex points out, and John chuckles, plucks the spaghetti up with his fingers, and drops it in his mouth. “Oh my God, did you just…”

A mischievous grin splits John’s face, and Alex realizes he’s being trolled.

“Hmph,” he says, and makes a dignified show of twirling his noodles onto his fork and not looking at John at all.

In spite of his resolution he finds himself sneaking glances. John improves quickly with his left hand, and by the time he gets to the pudding cup all the food makes it in his mouth. Watching John eat brings Alex’s appetite back with a vengeance. He gets _Planet Earth_ started up again on John’s lap and devours the rest of his meal despite the truly horrifying succession of slime molds and fungus-zombie ants crawling their way across the screen.

“Is the whole episode going to be this disgusting?” he grouses, as a spider fishes a drowned mosquito larva out of the bottom of a pitcher plant and eats it.

“Mm. You’ll see. Wait just a couple minutes,” John smirks. Now that he’s sobered up a little he dispenses with the stream-of-consciousness DVD commentary, but Alex is at least happy that he’s found some semi-comfortable midpoint between oblivion and agony. A place where he can reset, maybe even relax.

He scrutinizes John’s face for signs of distress or pain, but he seems to be doing okay so far. A little marinara sauce stains the corner of his mouth, which is turned up in private amusement. There’s a little tension in his eyebrows, so he’s either concerned about something or his shoulder’s troubling him slightly, but it’s not too bad yet.

Aware that he’s been staring at John’s face a little too long, Alex turns back to the screen. Knowing John’s truly bizarre idea of what constitutes cuteness, _you’ll see_ could mean something even more heinous is on the way. But the signs are promising. There’s a pretty cute little mammal of some sort, some scenery, and then—

“Elephants!” he exclaims.

John’s smirk blooms into a wide grin. “Charismatic enough for ya?”

“Oh my god, are you being a… a jungle animal hipster? Are elephants too mainstream for you, John Laurens?”

John cracks up, holding up his good hand defensively. “I just think that we need to appreciate _all_ of the animals. Even the ones that get no love because they’ve got weird faces or they’re tiny or you happen to not like the number of legs they have—and by the way, _gross_ is a hurtful thing to say and I’m sure that poor crab spider didn’t appreciate—”

“Okay, John, fair point, but as a counterargument I would just like to say: _elephants_!” Alex says, getting into the spirit of absurdity. He gestures at the screen, where the elephants are blowing bubbles in a pond with their trunks. “How do you compete with that?”

“It’s not easy,” John concedes, shaking his head ruefully. “Even though I try not to play favorites, I’m not quite over elephants myself. I loved them so much when I was a… was a…”

He trails off, his eyes going wide.

Alex’s instincts scream that something is wrong. He hits pause and moves the laptop off the bed, turning the lights on so he can get a better look.

John’s face is blotchy with shock and high emotion, his mouth twisting soundlessly. Alex’s heart plummets clear through the floor.

“John, John, talk to me,” Alex says, kneeling next to him and trying to show even a modicum of calm. “Is it your arm? What’s going on?”

“The—the kid,” John stammers. “I never—I never asked—I never heard what—is she—is she—”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay.” Alex soothes reflexively, an absurd worry already half-formed in the back of his mind that John’s hallucinating, like he did when he first came out of surgery. “Who are you talking about, John?”

“In the ambulance with me,” John says. “She was my patient—she, she was hit, bleeding—fuck, is she okay?”

Oh.

Oh, shit.

“I… I don’t know,” Alex stammers. It hadn’t occurred to him to look for the other shooting victim of that night—hadn’t occurred to him that John might want to know. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The anxiety in John’s voice heightens, takes on the tone of a horrified confession. “I didn’t even think about her until now—I didn’t even… that should have been the _first thing I asked.._.”

“Okay, John, I’ll try to find out for you,” Alex babbles, second-guessing himself even as he pulls out his phone. What is he going to tell John if she’s dead? If he can’t find the answer? “Just… just give me some time to figure out—”

“Alex, I fucked up,” says John. “I put myself in danger, that’s lesson number _one_ , don’t put yourself in danger, and so Lena had to treat us both at once—she couldn’t—the kid and me both, you only have so many hands, you only have so much _time_ , we tried—with the tourniquet, but I don’t even remember if she got it _on_ right, and she had to come and help me and,” he squeezes his eyes shut, and his voice climbs the register, high and tight, “I probably killed that girl, Alex. Because I didn’t move—because I didn’t listen—because I’m completely fucked in the head—”

Alex flashes back to Magdalena’s words yesterday morning. She’d recounted basically the same events, how John had refused to leave the girl’s side. He really had disobeyed a direct order so he could stay with the girl, knowing full well that he was putting himself in danger.

Alex has been so busy dealing with the fact that John’s been shot that he’s almost forgotten the issue of how it happened. But now that he thinks about it for a second, the first question that comes to mind is: God, what was John _thinking_? Had he been _trying_ to get himself killed?

The idea feels like an iron ball in Alex’s chest, making it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. A couple times, he’s suspected, maybe… but John’s never told him anything direct, and he’s never known how to ask—has never felt it was his place. His answer comes late.

“John, you’re not making any sense,” he says, frantically scanning headlines and clicking links. “Magdalena implied to me that if you hadn’t stayed with her the girl might not even have made it to the ambulance alive; how could you possibly—”

“I didn’t even _ask_ about her,” John whispers. He covers his mouth with his hand, the whites showing all the way around his eyes. “What am I even fucking _playing at_ …”

“John. John, stop it, stop. You’re asking now,” Alex says. He shoves his phone in John’s face. “Look at this, it’s the local news. 4 a.m. shootout between some guy and the cops with a minor and an EMT caught in the crossfire, both hospitalized. That’s this girl and you.” He’s relieved to see that John’s name isn’t in the article—nor is the child’s, for that matter. “She’s fine, John, you didn’t kill anybody, okay?” _Please stop blaming yourself_. _You’re scaring me._

“In the hospital isn’t fine,” John says, his voice wavering, but the relief already shows on his face. “And if that’s from yesterday, they don’t know—she could have gotten worse—”

“Well, there’s nothing about that in the news,” Alex says firmly. It takes a colossal effort just to sound calm and collected, but now more than ever he has to give John someone he can depend upon. “I can see if Magdalena knows any more, maybe?”

John heaves a shaky breath and forces a smile. “That… that would be really good.”

Alex nods and picks up John’s phone from the bedside table. “Could you unlock this for me? Actually, do you wanna just text her yourself?”

John punches in the code and hands the phone back. “I’m not coordinated enough for this shit right now," he says, and Alex gets the feeling he's talking about a lot more than the ability to move his fingers.

“Right,” Alex says, quickly typing out a message. He knows from experience with John that it’s about an hour before the night shift starts. Hopefully he’ll catch her. “Your surgery prep starts at ten. Should I ask her to come over at 9?”

“Maybe 9:30?” John says. He still looks wrecked. “I—I don’t know, talking that much…”

Alex had kind of hoped to give them more time, since he figured Magdalena would be way, way better at asking John all the mental health-related questions that really, really need answering. But the moment the plan is fully formed in his brain he knows it’s unfair to John and Magdalena both. Magdalena is John’s colleague and sort-of boss. Yeah, she clearly likes him, and it’s her job to support him to some limited extent. But that’s a terrible conversation to have with a superior, no matter how much she cares. And seeing John’s catastrophic guilt-spiral over this kid has only convinced Alex further that he needs support from _somewhere_.

And in the end it comes down to this, like it has since the moment he got the phone call: John asked for Alex.

“Hey, John?” he asks, hating how scared and tentative his voice sounds. “Can we talk?”

John looks at him, blank in a way that might be slightly hostile. “Have we not been talking all night?”

God. Alex takes a deep breath, fighting between two fears—on the one side that he might insult John, or set him off, by asking him whether he’d… sought this out, and on the other side that he might fail to perceive real danger to John’s life because he’d been too afraid to ask.

“Okay, first of all,” he babbles, “standard confidentiality clause applies here, okay? Nothing you say leaves this room except under very specific conditions that I can outline for you if you—”

“I took all the same classes you did, Alex,” John says, unimpressed. “I’m confused. Why am I suddenly lawyering up?” His eyes go wide. “You think that girl’s family will sue?”

“What? No, I think that’s… unlikely. I’m just saying, you can trust me.”

“Oh…kay.”

Alex sighs and wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans. A direct approach to this topic might only scare John into clamming up forever. Alex is no pro at talking about his feelings, but over a year of living with John has only cemented Alex’s impression that John’s relationship with his own emotions is… tumultuous at best. “So… last spring, you were having kind of a hard time.”

John narrows his eyes and presses his lips together, which is not the most encouraging thing he’s ever done.

Alex folds his hands in his lap and tenses his legs so he doesn’t fidget, trying to give John space to reply to the prompt. He looks at John—not staring him down, he hopes, just letting him know he’s listening. Seconds tick by, the space between them long.

At last, John says, "I think we should probably just stop dancing around the fact that I've been suicidal a couple times.”

Alex freezes for a moment, shocked. Not at what John’s saying—which he’s suspected for a long time—but at how quickly and matter-of-factly he's admitted it.

And then John brings his eyes up to meet Alex’s, blazing and defiant, daring him to recoil, to run, and Alex knows—no, this wasn’t a casual act for John. So maybe Alex’s question hasn’t broken him the way Alex had been terrified it would. But having to answer—and choosing to answer honestly—has put him on the defensive. Maybe it’s because Alex has finally seen Henry Laurens, maybe it’s because he’s been faking it so much himself lately, but he recognizes a mask when he sees one. Recognizes the bare challenge in John’s gaze as the preemptive strike it is.

"Okay," Alex says. “Okay.” Now that John’s thrown the word “suicide” out on the table, Alex has to figure out how to react to it. But the world hasn't stopped. The ceiling hasn't fallen in. Maybe this is normal. Maybe they can talk about this like they can talk about other things. "I'm guessing this spring was one of them?"

"Yeah," John says. He grimaces, but Alex thinks he sees some of the fear and defiance recede from his eyes. On some level he’s gotten Alex’s signal, _I’m with you wherever this goes_. _You don’t have to hide from me._ "Fucking... yeah. That night, when I asked you to stay in and I didn’t say why…”

“We watched _House_ reruns and drank...”

“… ‘til three in the morning, yeah, and I passed out on the couch.” John goes silent for a moment, and when he speaks again his hand wanders towards Alex—because this is one of the small and beautiful things about John Laurens, that when he thanks someone he reaches out to touch them. “I never thanked you. For… for being there for me, then."

"I felt like I wasn't," Alex says, clearing his throat. He keeps his hands in his lap, out of John’s reach. He promised himself he wouldn’t touch—wouldn’t put his heart through that, wouldn’t take advantage of John, wouldn’t for a thousand reasons that seem very distant right now. Need surges through him to feel John’s skin on his, to _know_ they're together on this, to make contact. "Wasn't doing enough, wasn't helping. Or was being really... clumsy about it."

"You helped," John says, his hand going still at the edge of the bed. "Just by being there, you helped."

Alex swallows down a surge of emotion in his throat. He wishes he could look away, but if John’s not going to then neither is he. Still, he’s terrified of what’s coming next, because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if this bullet was John trying to take his own life. It’s essential that he know the truth and yet he’s so afraid that this might not be fixable.

He braces himself.  "And... lately?"

John’s face softens, and his eyes drop for a moment—not because he’s avoiding Alex’s gaze, but because he likes whatever he’s thinking about. "Lately… lately’s been good. Really good. Better than I've been since... maybe since I was a kid. It's like... everyone tells you it gets better”—he looks back up, and Alex’s heart clamors to answer, to say _yes_ , _I know,_ to finish out his sentence for him, even—“but I never… I never thought it actually would. It was just something I told myself to stay alive."

"Me too.” The words surge out of Alex’s mouth with a will of their own. It feels so unfair that John’s been fucking… ripped open right in front of him, and Alex has seen so much that John might never have wanted him to see, and given nothing in return. He wants to reciprocate, wants to show John he’s not alone. "I mean, I was never—it never got so bad for me, but sometimes I just—I just _despaired_ , and I just told myself this won't last forever, and...”

Alex stoppers up his mouth, because John's eyes have gotten big. He realizes his mistake at once. He’s mortified to have revealed so much in so few words, to have presumed that just because John trusted him with his own burdens, that he could possibly want Alex’s as well. Especially now, when John’s load is so heavy, and Alex’s relatively light.

John’s looking at him, and Alex sees his own pain, reflected back at himself. John whispers, "I didn't know."

"It's not so bad compared to what some people have gone through," Alex says quickly.  

“No,” John insists, “it’s like you said before, you can’t really quantify—"

“I didn’t say that,” Alex snaps.

“Yeah, you did. You said we shouldn’t compare tragedy dicks. You think I’d forget a phrase like ‘tragedy dick’?”

That… damn. Alex scrambles to counter, feeling faintly absurd. “That was… that was different. I was talking about like, family members dying, which has happened to both of us. This is serious mental illness stuff”—his heart gives a little bobble, saying it out loud again, but John’s steady, John’s still following him, albeit with a twist to his mouth that suggests he doesn’t like what he’s hearing—“which you’ve had, and I haven’t. I can’t compare my middle school angst to… to that.”

John looks downright mutinous, but he doesn’t seem to have a response.

"So…” Alex starts, after a moment, “when you got shot, you weren't..."

"I wasn't trying to die," John says immediately. He exhales a rueful breath. “Actually, right there in the moment, I was fucking pissed. Like, _Jesus, can’t you see I’m fucking working here_?”

“Oh my God,” Alex laughs, mostly out of surprise. “That’s… that’s perfect. Like, _excuse you, jackass_!”

“Right?” John gestures for emphasis and winces. “I’m not crazy here. That’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to someone shooting you when you’re in the middle of something.” Some hesitation in his face makes Alex wait to reply, and he’s rewarded a few seconds later. "But… afterwards, when I realized how bad it was, I... I tried to accept what was happening as best I could."

"Did that work?" As he says it Alex realizes how intensely personal a question it is, _hey, John, what were you thinking when you thought you were dying?_ He feels like he’s broken his no-touching rule into a thousand little pieces, even though his skin and John’s skin haven’t met. "You don't have to answer that."

"I want to," John says, taking a deep breath. "I think I almost did. Because I was... I was just trying to help my patient at any cost. If that meant dying myself so that she could live... that was just... the cost, you know?"

"So it wouldn't even matter who it was? You'd just trade your life for a stranger's?"

"I'd like to think so," John says. "Although this girl, I..." He looks on the verge of saying something else. Looks away, bites his lip, and when he speaks again his voice is rough with pain.  “I've had so many second chances, Alex, and I didn’t deserve any of them. Some came from my dad’s connections, some from money, some from just… fucking dumb luck. And the only one I ever made anything of was this last one, when I got my certification. Now I’m the one who gives second chances. I think it's only... it's only right that I should give it everything I have. It’s… fitting, you know?"

 _Everything I have._ Emotion chokes Alex's throat. He never knew actual _people_ were like this. His life has taught him cynicism. Expecting the worst of people has never led him to disappointment. But John…Jesus, has he ever met another person as good as John Laurens? He's otherworldly. Just un-fucking-real. It’s like he came out of a storybook or some heroic myth or a fucking classical poem.

"Dulce et decorum est," he whispers, and John nods, emotion showing sudden and strong on his face. _It is sweet and proper_ , the phrase begins. They both know how it ends.

“I was scared, though, towards the end,” John confesses. A flush darkens his cheeks, and his eyes drop, breaking the contact between them. He mutters into his own lap. "That’s the problem with feeling better, I guess, that it gives you something to lose. And thinking about this surgery tomorrow, and maybe not being able to work, to be useful, I'm…” He clears his throat. “To be honest, I’m scared shitless."

"John," Alex says, and fuck it, this is necessary, this is absolutely necessary. He takes John’s left hand between both of his. "John, it's okay."

"I know it's okay. The team’s great, the hospital’s great, but I still—"

"No. No. I mean, it's okay to be scared of what might happen. That’s just… human. You’re allowed to be human"

A flicker of shock passes over John’s features. There's something so fragile in his eyes, something right on the verge of breaking, like the shell of a robin’s egg. He doesn't say anything, and nor does Alex.

"You don't have to—" John’s voice starts hoarse and is barely a rasp by the last word. His lips press hard together, and Alex doesn’t let it become a shameful thing, doesn’t look away. “You… here…” John swallows, and doesn’t speak.

"I'm here because I want to be, John," Alex says, as gently as he can, and John’s hand twitches between Alex’s. Alex can read the bewilderment in his eyes. "Because I… admire you, and I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I don’t deserve—"

John’s phone buzzes, the rattle loud against the end table.

“Is that Magdalena?” John asks.

Alex picks up the phone. Even without unlocking it, he can see that Magdalena’s sent them a picture—a selfie, actually, of herself with a smiling little girl in a hospital gown. “Holy shit!” he whoops. “John, look!” He practically shoves the phone his direction.

“Oh my God.” John twists his neck to get a better view, but gasps and grimaces at the sudden movement.

"Are you—" Alex begins, bending to check on him, but John's hand snakes out and snatches the phone before he can make an assessment. He stares down at the picture, his eyes widening with surprise and delight, a stunned smile filling his face. “She looks fantastic!"

The phone buzzes again, a text message appearing.

**didn’t have much time to visit but I hope that puts your mind at ease! see you in 12 hrs, best of luck tomorrow morning**

“Oh my God,” John repeats, shaking his head, eyes shining. He sags back to the bed, staring at the picture like it’ll vanish if he glances away.

After everything they spoke about earlier, Alex think he knows why John’s reacting like this. Here, finally, he has proof that his own good luck doesn’t have to be somebody else’s bad. That life isn’t a zero-sum contest he’s morally obligated to lose. Of course he's going to feel a little emotional about that.

John looks up, and Alex hurriedly wipes his eyes.

“You good?”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex says. His smile comes through fast and genuine. “Just… glad that worked out.”

“God, me too. Thank fuck.” John closes his eyes and bows his head. “I’m so fucking tired right now, Alex.”

 “That’s what pain meds are for, right?” Alex says. He stands and turns out the lights. Honestly, he's still in shock that they even had this conversation, but it's an elated kind of shock, knowing they have this connection now, knowing the true depth of John's trust in him. “You've earned a quiet night.” 

John chuckles. “Let's not make a habit of those.” Alex helps him find the button for his painkillers, and he holds it down for a few seconds. Sirens wail past outside, red and blue lights dancing on the ceiling, and a comfortable silence spreads out between them. Alex watches the stress drain from John's face; watches as his eyelids drift half-shut and his mouth falls half-open, the corners rising slowly into a dopey smile. "I just…”

After a few seconds, Alex prompts, “You just…”

“I’m so happy,” John slurs. “Is that crazy? That I’m happy I’m hurt worse than her?”

“I think… I don't know if _crazy_ is exactly the... the word...” Alex stalls, taken off-guard. Shit, that wasn't what he thought John was thinking at all. “Sometimes I wish you were a little _less_ selfless, you know?”

“But I’m not selfless,” John protests, blinking in confusion even as a blush spreads across his cheeks. “I do stupid shit and I fuck up and I always I get away with it and somebody else pays and finally, finally this time I didn’t and I’m just… I guess I’m happy that I didn’t get away with it, you know? It’s hard to explain.” He squirms a little more upright, though Alex can tell he’s already not at his most coordinated. “You had the words, though,” he continues, something like wonder coming into his eyes. “You knew what it was; you recognized it. _Dulce et decorum…_ ”

“Don’t take those words, John. Please,” Alex chokes out. “The whole point of that poem was that it was all a lie, remember? Don’t make me go all high school English on you.”

“Fine,” John murmurs, already sinking back to the pillow and closing his eyes. “Just gonna havta write some new words, I guess.”

“Yeah, John,” Alex says, patting his hand in relief. Okay, so maybe they didn't fix everything with one conversation, but there's a bridge between them now that wasn't there before. That's something they can work with. John hums in acknowledgment, breath coming deep and even. “We can write them together.”


End file.
